I did not care about Aeris' death

Aside: Every time conversations turn to tattoos I say the same thing. "I don't really care either way about other people getting them, but for me I don't think that's my style. And even if it was, I can't think of what I would get." That is at a change. They still aren't my style, but I've worked out what I would get. The symbol used by The Flash, the DC character. I'll explain why NEXT post.


In this post, I feel I must defend a statement I made in my last post, after a couple of people mentioned it to me.

This statement is the rather controversial one, in which I said I felt nothing for Aeris when she died in Final Fantasy 7 (WHOOPS. SPOILERS.) I didn't feel anything at the time because of my attitude when playing the game, and I didn't feel anything when recently replaying the game because of my newly found dislike of FF7. Well, dislike is the wrong word. Allow me to clarify both individual playthrough's perspectives.


1. First playthrough (approx early 1997).

Final Fantasy 7 was pretty much my introduction to RPGs. It was the second game we'd gotten on our brand new PlayStation (as in, 1, the original, the first therefore not needing a sequel designation), and it was being touted as the sperm-based emissions of the second coming of Jesus in CD form. It was such a huge game it needed 3(!!) CDs! Think about that folks! That's like, nearly 2 gigabyte of size! You don't get games like that anymore, oh no.

It was released back in January 1997, literally a dozen years ago now, and I was at the grand old age of 10. The story was shallow enough I could understand what was going on, but deep enough for me to feel like it was an epic, grand tale of adventure and awesomeness. The character were easy to understand but had actual LINES, so it felt like I was part of a movie or something.

Aeris, in the middle of this, just shat me to tears. Her personality was wooden and forced and her joining Cloud just felt ridiculous. She shows up, flirts at 'you'/Cloud (rather then with the character) and one of her first acts is to dress up the big-tough-soldier your character is meant to be in women's clothing, bringing about huge numbers of rather awkward jokes that even to a 10 year old felt in poor taste.

At no point did she demonstrate any real degree of personality to me, a ten year old, beyond the statement "I've got a magical bloodline, and I've got a thing for the protagonist". And so, for that reason, my ten year old brain decided not to include her in my party (and instead to stock it with the manly menly options, since I thought they'd kick more butt betterer). Not that character selection seemed to do much. All it really affected to any degree was some minor dialogue, who tried to go on a date with Cloud, and the limit breaks.

Since she was never in my party, when she suddenly left my party my only reaction was "Good thing I never bought her any crap, I'd hate to lose that money". Then when you saw her again and she was stabbed, my only thought was "Damn, now I want a sword like Sephiroth's even more".

I had no emotional reaction to Aeris' death in Final Fantasy 7 on my first playthrough.


2. Recent replay (approx mid-2008).

You'll note I said in the above section "Final Fantasy 7 was pretty much my introduction to RPGs". As you can imagine, this means I've played many, many of them since then. I have laughed at Deekin's antics (although I admit it took me a while to warm up to the little bastard), felt genuine surprise at the reveal in Knights of the Old Republic, and agonised over the choices in Mass Effect, among many other RPGs I've played. I have played most of them through multiple times, and felt the sting of altitis in an MMO.

Note all of the games on that list are Western style RPGs. For me the Eastern style RPG is not so much a game, but a DVD movie with an exceptionally irritating type of menu to play the game where you can get things wrong. I understand many people out there enjoy the games, but I am not a JRPG fan, and I sincerely doubt I ever will be. For me the joy of RPGs is the customisation, watching the game react to your creation of your own character, and how different types of characters respond to different combat scenarios.

As I said, I genuinely enjoyed Final Fantasy 7 when I first played it, but recently I tried replaying the game and found it rather dull. To use an awkward metaphor it was kind of like the fond memory of your first kiss on the playground, before you realise girls aren't yucky but at the same time quite enjoyable. Having a fond memory of that is fine, but if you go back to that experience 12 years on and start trying to get kisses on the playground you should be locked away. What does that awkward metaphor mean? I mean that just because you have fond memories of something, doesn't mean that it's any good in a dozen years time.

Move on people. Final Fantasy 7 was a grand game when it was released, but now there are many many more games in the area, we don't need constant games and movies drawing on it. Remember it fondly, don't drag it kicking and screaming into modern times.

Ahem. Sorry, tangent rant.

In my recent playthrough I found the story came rather flat. It was 2-dimensional pretending it was 3D, a bit like the original Wolfenstein but with more obvious characterisations of bad guys (and to be more obvious then Nazi's takes a bit of doing). Of course, the glaring differences between JRPGs and Western RPGs reared their ugly heads and I was left wondering if there was any real genuine customisability in the game beyond making everyone as balanced as possible and making sure someone on the team had "Steal" materia. Seeing as you seem to be needing to genuinely try to be able to lose, it did lose some of the "on the seat of your pants" danger it was going for at times.

The inability to decide ANYTHING about your own character besides which two friends he takes along, all the while inexplicably leaving everyone else behind, left a sour taste in my spoiled little Western-RPG-sensibilities. Even if you love tang when you're a child, after you've tasted quality chardonnay it's difficult to go back.

And then I came to the part where I was re-introduced to Aeris. The intervening years hadn't granted her personality any points, and she was still flat as a board intellect wise. "I'm a nice girl who gets caught up in all the chaos, BUT JUST SO HAPPENS I've got a magical bloodline, and I've got a thing for the protagonist". I tell a lie, her personality has grown a whole sixteen more words in the intervening 12 years.

Again, any attempt to feel sympathy and care for her was bludgeoned to death early on when she once more threw my tough grizzled soldier in a dress, rather then let him cut his way through the crime boss' henchmen. Which made no sense, as that's what the character ends up doing once they get inside anyway.

Not to mention she is one of the first things to really throw out my suspension of disbelief. Quiet gentle slum-girl is able to fight just as well as super-soldier terrorist? Even in Anime they'd at least justify it with her having some magical ninja background or something. Then again, at about this point in the game you're being attacked by roving rocket-launching monster robot houses, so I suppose I'm just being picky.

Then came the grand vanishing and her death... and once more I felt nothing. No, I tell a lie, I thought "huh, it would be a semi-reasonable plot twist, if I didn't already know about it." Second lie. I also was impressed at Sepiroth's sword's ability to cut through the sternum. That's a bloody hard bit of bone, right there.

And so, again, I didn't really care about her being killed. Since her particular speciality (magic, according to the stats which seem to affect damn near nothing) was already covered by other party members I liked more, I never took her in the party. I never grew to like the character, and so when her particular collection of 1s and 0s were removed from my party screen, it... didn't bother me.


I do understand that at various points in this post I seemed to have lapsed away from my original position about lack of empathising with Aeris, but at the same time it's all linked. The JRPG style of storytelling makes it difficult for me to relate to the characters, since I feel more like an observer then a participant, which jars with my engrained RPG ideas.

I dunno, maybe I'm just emotionally stunted. I felt nothing at the end of the second act (WHOOPS. SPOILER) of Neverwinter Nights 2, although that could be attributed to horrendous writing. Then again, as a counter, I was genuinely bummed in Mass Effect, when... Oh no, you'll have to play that one yourself.